Project Life … My Way

Look what came to play at my house today …

So it seems I’ve officially joined the Project Life club. Couldn’t see that happening EVER when it first came out … in fact, I was almost offended by the divided page protectors and what they represented. For a 12×12 scrapper who loves dimension and detail and scissors and glue and ink … the idea of spending some of my precious scrapping time rounding corners and slotting cards into perfect little pockets was just not something I seriously wanted to do. We made peace with each other and came to a bit of a compromise when I did a few travel photos ‘Project Life’ style and saw the potential of being able to add in those dimensional 12 x 12 pages whenever I pleased. With so many amazing photos and experiences of France it made sense to get them off the computer, printed and arranged so I could share my trip with others … and of course all the tickets, brochures and bits that I’d collected could all go in there too using an envelope page. But still … I watched others document their daily life Project Life style and just didn’t think I could do it … until now.

I must explain … a few things have come together, fallen into place, which has taken this Project Life thing from something I admired other people doing to something I really think I can do myself.

The first is this little thing …

… which was wrapped up under my Christmas tree this year. (Yes I have the best bosses ever!) There is no way I would consider documenting daily life in this way if I didn’t have this little printer right here at home. I can print quickly and easily straight from my phone without even needing a cord if I so desire. But the best bit is that I don’t have to work out in advance what size photo I want and whether I want it portrait or landscape … and then remember that information once I get to Harvey Normans … and then there’s the matter of actually going out of my way to drive there which would definitely not happen every week so then I’d have to ‘catch up’ with photos and journalling … and all that just seems too HARD! This way I can pick the photos for the week, print them to the size I want and have it done … EASY!

The next thing that made this idea work for me was this new little album. I LOVE this little album … it’s so perfectly greeny/blue and it’s got this gorgeous velvety black stuff on the inside.

This is our cover page … on the other side of this will be the first full week spread. Each open page will fit 4 4×6 ‘things’ (photos or cards) and 4 3×4 things. That gives me 8 slots for a weeks worth of photos and journalling … that’s achievable … I think. I already know (from doing the occasional photo a day challenges) that I don’t take photos every single day … some days are just not photo suitable and I don’t want to get to the end of a day and feel obligated to take a photo of my meal  just to feel like I’ve ‘kept up’ or something. This way I’m hoping those boring … or busy … weeks will still have enough photos to work with … and I still get the encouragement to record every day life but not the pressure of filling a big album which I know would have me giving up before I’d done till the end of January. Oh and also … this little album is much easier to work with in a confined space (ie. my scrapping area). Of course … being little … it will only hold 19 weeks of daily life … assuming I manage to do one week per opening. Maybe I’ll just do 19 weeks and have a break … maybe I’ll start on volume two … maybe I’ll need 3 of these albums for the whole year … maybe each album will be a different colour … maybe they’ll all be the same perfectly greeny/blue … I don’t know that yet … I reckon I’ll work that one out 19 weeks from now.

The third thing that made this seem like a good idea was the whole Heather Bailey designed kit. I’ve been a Heather Bailey fabric collector for ages … there’s just something about her style that I really like … and I saw enough tealy greeny/blue colours in this kit to make it the perfect choice for me. I’m not so sure about the pink cards … would suit me better if they were red … but then there are way more cards in the kit than I’ll need anyway so maybe I’ll just use the pink cards for something else. I’ve also managed to get over the idea of having everything perfectly matchy … I plan to get the kids involved in this album, using photos from their cameras and having them write their stories too … so there’s no way I can get overly protective of making everything match.

 

And that is that … the start of my official Project Life journey. If you’d like to know more about Project Life you can find everything there is to know here. And if you live in NZ or Australia you can order Project Life supplies (and a super convenient photo printer) from Craft House. Meanwhile I’ll work on recording life …